Chapter 216 Thunderclap!
He immediately stood up and looked toward the interior of the village, and sure enough, there was an old man sitting in front of a tile-roofed house, with a dry pipe in his mouth, looking in their direction.
He had just been inside this old man's body.
He now desperately wanted to know whether it was his own self inside the old man's body now or the old man himself, things were getting more and more chaotic. But just as he was about to get up and ask,
a familiar voice reached his ears.
"Gentlemen, we are travelers from out of town, and we've come here by chance. I wonder if we could enter the village to take a look?"
He turned around to look.
And saw another version of himself and Hungry Monkey, both full of goodwill, coming over to ask for directions.
While asking, they were amiably handing out cigarettes to each of them.
"..."
Chen Miao fell completely silent, not knowing what was happening. He had clearly completed the task, so why had he returned to this secret realm, and why had his identity changed? He just quietly accepted the cigarette,
lit it without a word, and began to straighten out his thoughts amidst billows of smoke.
As he and Hungry Monkey walked into the village, he got up and walked down from the bridgehead, ready to find the old man smoking the dry pipe and ask him if it really was himself just now.
But when he arrived in front of the old man's tile-roofed house,
he found that the old man had vanished.
It was then he remembered that if the old man really was his former self, he should still be busily destroying some eerie things, like human flesh in the pot, people's ashes, diaries that revealed information, and so on.
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He had to find the man.
And confront him face to face to see if it was really himself.
But his priority remained to try hard to stay alive. Although he didn't understand what was happening, this secret realm was developing in a direction he couldn't comprehend, yet striving to survive was still paramount.
Just then,
he heard voices not far away. It was himself and Hungry Monkey from before, approaching his location from another alley.
He quickly hid on the other side of the wall.
"This village looks quite normal, no eerie places at all."
"Miao, your guess might be right; the introduction panel to this secret realm is truly misleading us."
"Let's keep searching. I always feel that this secret realm is not that simple, but as they say, there must be something strange about an abnormal situation. If there truly is no eerie place, then we can just wait in place and see the secret realm through to the end."
This conversation was very familiar!
It was exactly the talk he had with Hungry Monkey before, word for word!
But this talk exploded like a thunderbolt in his head!
...
Hiding behind the wall, Chen Miao's eyes were filled with shock. He no longer needed to confirm whether the old man with the dry pipe was his former self; he could now be one hundred percent sure that this old man with the dry pipe was indeed himself from before.
The reason was simple.
He saw that the hoe in the neighbor's yard, left out in the open, was now covered with mud, which meant his former self had already begun to take action.
So up until now,
there have been three of himself in this secret realm.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
Myself at that time, just a moment ago, and myself right now.
That's to say, three versions of myself existed simultaneously in a secret realm.
And then he suddenly realized something: for his past self, it was an F-level secret realm, with the objective of surviving for 12 hours, but for his just-recent self, it was an E-level secret realm, also with the objective of surviving for 12 hours.
Twelve hours for both.
Logically speaking, these two tasks would be conflicting, but in reality, they were not.
If he remembered correctly, about four or five minutes after his just-recent self arrived in the secret realm, his past self appeared at the bridgehead with Hungry Monkey, meaning that although both tasks lasted 12 hours,
there was actually a time difference between them.
As long as his just-recent self died immediately after completing the survival time, not only could he ensure that his just-recent self completed the task, but he could also allow his past self to complete the task and perfectly clear the secret realm.
In an instant!
He suddenly understood the true meaning of the secret realm.
The real task of this secret realm should be to figure out a way to make all three of them complete the task simultaneously.
And if he were to let his just-recent self's plan succeed, then his past self would definitely choose to remain inactive and subsequently fail the task. If he too failed, the cost of failure might be getting trapped in this secret realm forever, or it might mean that his past self did not perfectly clear the secret realm, which could affect all the subsequent time trajectories.
After thinking it through in an instant, he immediately understood what his task was.
It was simple—
"Disrupt the plans of my just-recent self, find the time difference, and ensure that all three selves complete the task."
Seeing as the noises from over the wall were getting closer, he did not hesitate for a moment: he climbed over the wall into the neighbor's courtyard, immediately took out the hoe that his just-recent self had aged, washed it clean, and placed it back looking as good as new.
Then, without stopping for breath, he ran towards the next household.
The smell of food was wafting from this household.
By the time he arrived, the originally bloody scene had been cleaned up. A pot was simmering with delicious-smelling pork. He ran to the water well in the backyard, bent over, and immediately saw a large number of human organs at the bottom of the well.
This was a scene his just-recent self had cleaned up.
He moved on to the next house.
The weird portraits and wax figures had all been destroyed. He wanted to fish them out of the well, but clearly, this task was not simple. After estimating the time and making sure that his just-recent self had left the third household,
he quickly ran to the third house, which contained the diary.
He didn't plan to run into his just-recent self at that time. Many things couldn't be explained, nor did he feel the need to explain. Although the human flesh and portraits had been destroyed, the diary should still be easy to repair.
...
Chen Miao quickly reached the third household, and as expected, the diary that had been placed in the cabinet had disappeared, most likely having been swallowed by his just-recent self.
After rummaging through the house, he swiftly found a new diary and pen.
"Phew!"
Chen Miao took a deep breath without any hesitation and wrote all the information he remembered in his mind into the new diary. He decided to forge a diary, and to avoid making his past self suspicious by finding the handwriting too similar,
he intentionally made each character twist and turn.
Completely different from his own handwriting.
It was only after finishing all this that he let out a sigh of relief and prepared to stuff the diary into the cabinet, waiting for his past self to discover it.